First Botnet of Linux Web Servers Discovered 254
The Register writes up a Russian security researcher who has uncovered a Linux webserver botnet that is coordinating with a more conventional home-based botnet of Windows machines to distribute malware. "Each of the infected machines examined so far is a dedicated or virtual dedicated server running a legitimate website, Denis Sinegubko, an independent researcher based in Magnitogorsk, Russia, told The Register. But in addition to running an Apache webserver to dish up benign content, they've also been hacked to run a second webserver known as nginx, which serves malware [on port 8080]. 'What we see here is a long awaited botnet of zombie web servers! A group of interconnected infected web servers with [a] common control center involved in malware distribution,' Sinegubko wrote. 'To make things more complex, this botnet of web servers is connected with the botnet of infected home computer(s).'"
Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just waiting for the flamefest here of Linux vs Windows botnets.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
Just waiting for the flamefest here of Linux vs Windows botnets.
OK, I'll start. Linux webservers are so lame they don't even include the facility [slashdot.org] for users to disable them remotely in case of malware distribution.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
It's nice to see Lo0niX has advanced to the point where it can now successfully run botnet software. I'll bet there's no gui though. I'm not up on linux commands so don't laugh but I'll wager it's something like:
* apt get b0tnet -s -x9 -secret -warez -pr0n -infectWindows=1 -p
Rather than the point-and-click convenience you'd expect on windows.
Maybe games are next? Quake-n for linux would be nice.
How's that? :D
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
Rather than the point-and-click convenience you'd expect on windows.
It's not that easy on MS windows. After you click the link to the tennis player nudie pix, your machine locks up. Then you have to *hard reboot* (without the help of the blue screen to let you know your computer crashed). Only after you hard reboot, usually by pulling the power cord all the way out, can you run the botnet software.
Windows really isn't as user friendly for botnets as everyone thinks it is. I hope 7 does better.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
As a user of Windows 7, I found it exceedingly helpful. I was pleased when Clippy popped up and said, "It looks like you're trying to infect your computer, do you want some help?" At which point Clippy showed me how to use Aero Shake(tm) to get rid of all the distracting popups that would divert me from trying to find the source of all malware. After I encountered a fork in the road, so to speak, Clippy demonstrated Aero Snap(tm) so I could compare the sites I was surfing side by side. At long last, I found truly good malware on a *stan website. Top level domain was for some country like Miyagistan. Thankfully, I bought Windows(tm) 7 Ultimate Edition(tm) and downloaded the appropriate language pack so the viruses I downloaded would be more at home.
Running it was as easy as clicking on it and clicking "Continue." Ever since then I've been living in a peaceful coexist
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
Rather than the point-and-click convenience you'd expect on windows.
Actually, they found Amazon had patented that so they had to go with the no-click experience. Got to respect corporate IP, you know.
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how droll.
A real linux guy will do a subversion checkout of the bot and issue a
make clean; make deps; make;
Only n00bs use that Apt-get stuff...
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Not entirely true about Linux server. When I build them I usually install Webmin which allows me to manage the server via web-gui. Yes I know if I were a real linux geek I'd do everything in command line but when there are times I can't remember the proper CLI sequence it's easier just use the web-gui.
Recently I built a linux webserver with RAID 5 drives. I've read the docs on how to create a RAID 5 array but that took awhile. When I installed the raid 5 module into Webmin I did it in 5 mins. I've als
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Only an idiot would claim that servers being compromised because admins choose to send passwords over the internet in plain text proves anything about how secure the software running on those servers is.
Ah.....OK, I expect LOTS of such claims.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Funny)
It also looks likely that the passwords were stolen from the admin's compromised windows desktops!
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Only an idiot would claim that servers being compromised because admins choose to send passwords over the internet in plain text proves anything about how secure the software running on those servers is.
Unless it's a Windows web server. In that case, Administrator incompetence always proves how insecure Windows/IIS are.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only an idiot would claim that servers being compromised because admins choose to send passwords over the internet in plain text proves anything about how secure the software running on those servers is.
Ah.....OK, I expect LOTS of such claims.
Realistically, that depends. Part of secure design is accounting for potential user errors. That's why it's a good practice to have the password, when typed, appear as "********" rather than "heythisismypasswordanyonewatching". A good designer would know many users aren't going to look around for someone casually shoulder surfing while typing a password, so they take a step to prevent it.
Of course, no software developer can fully account for a malfunctioning behind keyboard processing unit. Idiots are even more persistent than crackers in finding new ways to circumvent security measures. However, it can to some degree mitigate its effects, through making things as secure as possible and warning the user if (s)he is about to do something that might compromise it.
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There is the argument to be made that plain-text passwords should never be allowed to begin with, nevermind which platform, 3rd-party software, or hardware architecture that a system is comprised of.
That being said, there could be just a wee tad bit of blame laid at the feet of the programmers of the software/hardware for allowing this to be possible in the first place.
Hindsight is so useless :P
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't technically a botnet: [...] These are simply rootkitted servers and they appear to have been done manually. The unique aspect of this is that it seems to be coordinated,
Which is what makes it a botnet.
so the MS astroturf team has decided to call it a "botnet".
"define: botnet" [google.com] ... I see nothing in there that precludes manually-compromised systems.
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No. Manually compromising servers and setting up nginx on them to serve files does not make it a botnet. "Botnet" or not has nothing to do with infection vector.
It refers to compromised machines that have a certain 'intelligence' so that they form a network of their own, and allow the botmaster to easily deploy new instructions to them all. And all bots will execute the new instructions automatically.
Manually compromising servers and installing a tool that causes all those servers to rendezvous wit
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Manually compromising servers and installing a tool that causes all those servers to rendezvous with or receive commands from a central control point to execute instructions would make them a botnet.
The key question would be: do the compromised servers also run a program that periodically polls a control station for commands, or does the script kiddie manually command individual compromised servers?
I actually encountered this a few years ago, a Red Hat box had been carelessly placed on the internet with a poor dba username password combo. The attacker had not gained root access. But he did manage to install zombie software on the computer in /var/tmp, which consisted of a small web-server serving malicious code and a custom ssl-irc client configured to connect to the botnet owners irc server.
Curious, I took a copy of the software he had installed before I wiped the server. I then proceeded to connect
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Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Informative)
Did you seen 'often' in the definition? 'Often' =/= 'always'.
The definition you yourself presented suggests that a botnet can be formed of automatically spread programs but does not have to be.
Moreover, there is no part of the term 'bot' that suggests it requires automatic propagation. I have an IRC bot running right now. It does not go out and spread itself. It is merely a mechanical/electrical agent which operates autonomously in response to higher-level commands from me- just like any robot.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And BTW, this article does not claim that Linux was hacked. It claims that peoples websites were hacked, and those websites happen to be hosted on Linux. Nothing to see here, no botnet, and no hacked Linux kernel. Just poor system administration allowing FTP password sniffing, etc. The whole thing is sensationalist bullshit.
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The AC and those claiming that there is no requirement for a botnet to propagate automatically are correct. Here is the definition of 'robot,' courtesy Merriam-Webster:
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By your definition cron is a bot. Sorry, but it is not . I was around since before there were botnets, active on the hacking/phreaking scene, so I was there when the terms were coined. I know exactly what bot means; you have literally no idea.
These are not my definitions -- they are yours. It was you who posted the definition of "botnet," and it was you who suggested that we look up "robot." I did so, even going so far as to make sure to consider each of the definitions of two major dictionaries, and used those terms to evaluate your claim. Was there another widely-recognized resource you wanted us to use for the definition of "robot?"
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Your stated requirement that a botnet depend on a worm is not a requirement in my professional opinion, and according to the definition you gave us earlier, it is not yours either.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the control which is automated, not the propagation. The idea is that if I root a hundred systems, and instead of OO, I put on a rootkit that forces them to participate in a network where I can issue a single command to my zombie army that forces them to DDoS you, I've got a botnet. If I have to ssh into each of them individually and manually instruct them to participate, I have a bunch of rooted systems.
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I am sorry, in this case you are wrong. The "bot" in botnet means that there are a lot of robots in a network doing some kind of coordinated task.
So it is not the propagation method but rather how it works that is refered to when calling it botnet.
Of course, the preferred way to set up a botnet is using some
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Informative)
Not to pressure one too much, but automaton is rooted in Greek, not Latin. :)
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect you are astroturfing for MS here
And I suspect that you are a troll.
and so will want "botnet" to mean "any set of two or more compromised computers". But that definition means that the number of windows botnets would be astronomical, so be careful about your definitions.
Did you even read what I linked to? A botnet is a collection of compromised computers that share a Command and Control channel.
Instead I propose the following definition:
Because the generally accepted definitions don't suit your purpose?
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So I'm not the only one who selects their definitions, am I? You. Are. An. Astroturfer.
Sorry, but by that logic, wouldn't you--explicitly--be one as well? "You X, just like I do, so you're Y." ...
And also a troll. Because frankly, if you want to actually make a point (and at this point you really aren't) the whole ad hominem thing is something to stay away from. Who employs him, even in theory, has so astoundingly little to do with whether or not his statements are accurate that nobody's going to listen once the argument gets to that point--including the person you're talking to.
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Ok. I went back and read the definitions.
I like this one:
The term often applies to groups of computer systems that have had malicious software installed by worms, Trojan horses or other malicious software.
"Often" is a very different word than "always", "solely" or "only".
It's clear that how the botnet came about is not critical to the definition. The clue is right there in the name that it's referring to a network of bots.
The key detail here is that it's a number of computers under surreptitious remote control.
And you like the one that fits your fiscal agenda. So I'm not the only one who selects their definitions, am I? You. Are. An. Astroturfer.
With people like you making Linux users look like raving madmen, I'm pretty sure all the MS astroturfers have been granted the day off.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Funny)
Why should it have to self propagate and at what degree do current bot nets self propagate without users compromising their systems.
Servers don't roam the net downloading porn and music.
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Servers don't roam the net downloading porn and music.
You are here by excommunicated from the secret global geek alliance for revealing the truth behind one of our most useful excuses.
And to any lay people listening in:
Computers can in fact act on their own and illegally download music or collect an unseemly amount of lesbian teen videos. No one knows why and you son/husband is just as surprised as you are.
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Servers don't roam the net downloading porn and music.
Ummm my servers at work do but they are custom configured to do so... And yes they run LINUX...
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Funny)
servers don't roam the net -- the net roams them (google, etc.)
Wait you forgot the "Soviet" part.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone was astroturfing for MS they would never say the word 'botnet' unless they are insane.
This is definately not the first time a unix system has been comprimised by an administrator being slack about their passwords. Why it's an issue is because each system is being used to control multiple infected windows machines, something I doubt an astroturfer would want to draw attention to (excepting the previously mentioned insane ones).
It's far more likely that this sort of activity has been going on for years and it's just the first time any mainstream media has caught up on the fact.
The solution is so simple, just protect your root passwords for fucks sake, yet we know there are countless incompetent admins without any clue out there and this shit should be expected, in that it is impossible to aviod voluntary security breaches.
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That's a ridiculous definition. The vast majority of botnets aren't self-propagating. A program that is self-propagating would be a worm. If it happened to maintain communication with other compromised machines, then it would also become a botnet. But self-propagation has never been a requirement in the definition of "botnet".
Of course, the easiest way to make yourself a botnet is to upl
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Informative)
Botnets do not have to be self propagating. The very first botnets were on IRC.
Where in fact, the machines weren't compromised. The owners of the machines actually ran the code (commonly Eggdrop) and voluntarily joined their bots to the botnet. They weren't even malicious.
The term "botnet" does not imply a network of compromised hosts, or even malware. It refers to a network of robotic agents that are in communication with each other.
Botnets were commonly used to form shared "party lines", to allow people to DCC CHAT their Eggdrop bots and communicate with people visiting from other channels, and other IRC networks.
At first, these were used only for communication, people joined the botnets to chat with each other, there was no way to control other bots.
At some point, some of the botnets got pretty large...
Some of the botnets had a feature where a trusted "bot owner" or "bot master" as they were called, could be made "botnet admins" by bots they were peering with... allowing these botnet admins to command other hosts to do certain things on IRC
Some botnets had member nodes run scripts that were able to do things like pingflood a user off IRC.
This would be commonly used if some bad boy had taken over a popular channel. Ping flooding a user off IRC is undesired by the victim, but one time, it may have been used to encounter other hacking techniques the "victim" of the flood had been using to sabotage IRC channels.
At some point, some IRC botnets started getting formed whose sole purpose was to flood.
Eventually the term escaped IRC... other types of botnets started forming like Peer to Peer ones, smart ones that automatically added nodes (instead of two botnet admins deciding to interconnect), and botnets whose sole purpose was to accept commands from a central point.
But the point is, the notion of a "Bot" and a "Botnet" has an origin that causes the term to not imply self replication.
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There, fixed that for you.
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Instead I propose the following definition:
botnet: an automated and self propagating network of compromised machines.
It's pretty clear the definition you're really trying to propose is:
"botnet: a network of infected or compromised non-Linux machines."
Just callin' it like I want to see it.
Fixed your sig for you.
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Sure seems to... at least on IE6.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
...so the MS astroturf team has decided to call it a "botnet".
I'm curious--how can I tell when an idea is being promoted by the "MS astroturf team" and not by regular not-so-clueful reporters that might mistakenly use the wrong term?
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how can I tell when an idea is being promoted by the "MS astroturf team" and not by regular not-so-clueful reporters that might mistakenly use the wrong term?
When you don't hear the black helicopters of the astoturf team, that means it's them, since they're designed so you won't hear them.
Re:Ok, so I got the popcorn ready.... (Score:5, Insightful)
...so the MS astroturf team has decided to call it a "botnet".
I'm curious--how can I tell when an idea is being promoted by the "MS astroturf team" and not by regular not-so-clueful reporters that might mistakenly use the wrong term?
Dude, this is slashdot. That means that anything with a potentially pro-microsoft spin obviously came straight from MS PR... Erm, M$ PR. Shit, I think they're about to catch onto me too, I hope nobody saw that...
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Lol leave it to a Linux fanboy to re-define botnet from "a network of robots" to "anything else so long as it can't include Linux".
Ngix or whatever it's called is clearly a bot, any program that recieves input and performs a task fits that definition, and these servers are clearly networked together to operate a secondary botnet.
What exactly would you call it, besides a botnet? It's not a worm, those are self-propigating, often used to carry other forms of malware. It's not a virus, those are intended to c
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was involved in investigating a compromised linux based web server. basically it all went down like this:
They hired a stupid guy to install some adbanner to their site. His windows based computer was infected by several viruses. He downloaded the full site, at which point the virus inserted some malicous code in the websites code. He reuploaded the whole thing, and bang the website was infected. It was still infected, but Windows was the primary infection vector combined with the stupidity of the computer
Dang. (Score:2, Funny)
Linux (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Linux (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes! Awesome! It took long enough for one of these Linux botnets to manifest!
Now all we needd is for Windows to be ready for the Internet, and we'll be in the next era of secure computing!
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In English please?
It's the Year of the Linux Botnet!
You know, because those things never worked well in WINE. [linux.com]
Stupid people use linux too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stupid people use linux too (Score:5, Interesting)
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Absolutely! There's plenty of stupid to go around.
1. Where was the firewall admin to prevent external systems from connecting to these webservers over port 8080?
2. Why did the admins use insecure tools or insecure systems to allow their credentials to be sniffed?
3. Where was the IDS/IPS to notice the sudden change in traffic?
4. Where was the load balancer/reverse proxy to intecept this junk?
5. Where was the routine review of logs to notice the dynamic DNS updates from computers with (presumably) stati
Re:Stupid people use linux too (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Where was the firewall admin to prevent external systems from connecting to these webservers over port 8080?
2. Why did the admins use insecure tools or insecure systems to allow their credentials to be sniffed?
3. Where was the IDS/IPS to notice the sudden change in traffic?
4. Where was the load balancer/reverse proxy to intecept this junk?
5. Where was the routine review of logs to notice the dynamic DNS updates from computers with (presumably) static DNS entries somewhere?
6. Where was the periodic pen/vulnerability test against these systems?
...
7) Where was the funding to pay for 1 through 6?
Re:Stupid people use linux too (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I would say the people to blame are those hosting providers who keep using ftp with weak usernames and weak passwords as the preferred way to access your website.
There was a time when the client software was insufficient to the task, that time is long gone. WinSCP is mature and easy to use. No, browsers don't offer sftp:// support natively, but the browser is not very secure anyway. Hosting providers need to get their heads out of the sand and upgrade to secure authentication.
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No, browsers don't offer sftp:// support natively
Konqueror does!
In addition some file managers do (Nautilus, Dolphin,...), there are GUI tools that allow you to mount a Fuse sftp filsesystem, and you can use rsync over ssh on the command line or with a GUI and most ftp apps these days suppors sftp.
Note that these are not cheap shared web hosts, these are virtual or dedicated servers. The admins had the choice and decided to be lazy. If they were being paid to do this (some will be people running their own servers for fun or profit), they should be fired.
And here it comes (Score:4, Funny)
Does this mean Linux finally has reached a point of user friendliness equal to Windows?
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Yes, but it's probably just a one-off trough.
Re:And here it comes (Score:4, Funny)
Linux still has a ways to go, I'm afraid.
What's new here? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's so special about this one that we haven't seen in the last 5 years? Linux or BSD systems have been durned into rogue IRC servers (for C&C purposes) for zombies all the time.
Whether sweeps for vulnerable AWStats installations, badly configured PHP installations or archaic PHPBB installs, webservers are hammered with automated exploits all day. Maybe "DataCha0s 2.0" rings a bell for some.
Missing in the summary (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, if those servers already had apache, and some old vulnerable web application that enables somewhat transfer and execute binaries, in no recently patched kernels 2.4+ there are ways to escalate priviledges and get root to install what is needed. But probably normal users using modern distributions or admins caring a little about security are safe.
stolen root credential (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing in the summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Missing in the summary (Score:4, Insightful)
At the moment that may be true, but that has certainly not been the case many times before.
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It's been true since after 2000.
Granted there have been some remote code execution exploits, but the number of those is miniscule compared to someone with a poorly configured box clicking something they shouldn't have clicked, and then saying "yes" when the thing they shouldn't have clicked wanted to install something they shouldn't have installed.
Re:Missing in the summary (Score:4, Funny)
"With about 100 nodes". The average windows botnet (at least the one that make into the news) have from hundreds of thousands to millons of nodes.
That's irrelevant. A linux botnet would be so much more productive than a windows botnet that you don't need nearly as many nodes.<\straightface>
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Really, this is a pretty trivial "jump" from the normal way of things.
You've got manually installed rootkits, and most of them have C&C tools. How is this much different, other than optimizing the C&C mechanisms? There's nothing here to suggest this is anything "new": the mechanisms, whatever used, still appear to be tightly constrained to "manual rootboxing" - a time consuming process compared to a "real" automated botnet.
All evidence points to this being more of someone's "pet" botnet than it does
This has been happening for a LONG time... (Score:5, Informative)
Back around 2001, I found a "botnet" comprising a perl script that ran on websites. Because it ran as a child of Apache, it showed up as "http" in ps. It would log into an IRC server, and wait for commands which appeared to be little more than arbitrary bash commands that were shelled out.
Bone-headedly simple. Ran well on any unix website host running perl scripts, installed via an insecure formmail.pl script. I penetrated the IRC network and watched for a few hours while the operator attacked a few hosts. There were some 50 hosts or so. Then I killed the script and updated all copies of formmail.pl hosted on the server...
Is this new news?
What's next? "Hammers can be used to smack things, even if they aren't nails." !?!?!
Truth is this: no operating system is 100% secure. But this "botnet" isn't necessarily even a compromise of the Operating System! Port 8080 is above 1024, so non-root controlled processes can open sockets there. This may be nothing more than something like the perl script I mentioned and having nothing to do with the Operating System in question. The server wasn't compromised, just a bad script was running that had to be deleted, then killed with an Apache restart.
Given the parameters I just mentioned, there isn't an Operating System around that would stop this from happening. It's just that the "Mom's basement" fanbois get all riled up because it's gospel that Linux is immune to $allBadThings.
Reporters Fail (Score:5, Informative)
The only part of this article that is news is the part that is incorrect. Botnets of Windows machines often have compromised Linux servers working as a control channel or update channel. It is not at all unusual. What would be unusual would be for a worm or virus to actually compromise Linux machines in an automated fashion and make them bots. That does not seem to be what has happened here as the Linux systems seem to have been manually hacked in a normal, directed attack.
Basicaly, nothing new or newsworthy happened here, except someone mistakenly referred to the compromised Linux servers as bots.
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Basicaly, nothing new or newsworthy happened here, except someone mistakenly referred to the compromised Linux servers as bots.
Well, you are assuming that calling a machine a bot is dependent on the fact it was infected. In many ways a bot is any machine that is doing the bidding of the people in control, no matter how control was achieved. Now whether the machine was 'infected' or 'hacked' is a different matter.
Re:Reporters Fail (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, you are assuming that calling a machine a bot is dependent on the fact it was infected.
Not really. Calling a machine a bot or zombie is generally an indication that they are the regular "peon" part of a botnet. I mean technically the control channel and update channel and the terminals machines the operator is using are part of the botnet. They just are not generally referred to as bots because they are part of the system doing the controlling instead of being the end systems used to launch attacks.
My main point was, the summary and title here led readers who use the specific terms one way to think that is what was happening. The comments from researchers led people to think that. That is why this was news. It's not news to discover Linux systems hacked by hand are being used to control Windows bots, because that happens all the time and is, perhaps, the most common kind of botnet.
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'Botnet' has never meant 'auto-infected' and if they assumed that, they were careless. The summary makes no attempt to fool them into thinking anything other than the facts.
Besides which, at this point, we don't -know- how it spreads. We just know that it exists... Which to me, is news.
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It shouldn't be. Or, at least the general concept shouldn't be. The original IRC bots were written to run on *nix, because they were meant to be used for channel control/moderation, and so needed to run on an always-on server. Which usually meant a shell account on a linux or BSD machine. Small channels only employed one bot, but larger ones used several working in tandem. So, really, the earliest bot-nets were all *nix based - they just weren't malic
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'Botnet' has never meant 'auto-infected' and if they assumed that, they were careless.
No, botnet means a network of computers auto controlled, but in general when you describe a botnet, especially referring to the OS, you refer to the OS of the bots, which make up the majority, not the OS of the select few control channel systems.
The summary makes no attempt to fool them into thinking anything other than the facts.
The title was, "First Botnet of Linux Web Servers Discovered". It didn't say first botnet of Windows machines controlled by ten Linux Webservers. It isn't the first botnet that includes Linux Web servers, those are actually quite common. Thus the average person who
Re:Reporters Fail (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a continuous flood of SSH brute force attacks on any *nix machine connected to the internet. All one has to do is monitor their log files for verification.
They are not even sophisticated attacks, they are attempting to login using lame passwords, i.e. after watching the attacks for awhile I set up a box to see what they were doing and created a user name test with the password test based on the fact I could see them using test as one of the users for the attack and suspecting it was a dumb password attack.
It wasn't long before the system was "compromised" and likely recorded on the other end as a successful attack. Several hours later the account was again accessed and various applications downloaded and executed as the test user. One of these applications connected to the EFNET IRC network and joined a channel.
Using another system I connected to the IRC network in way I thought would be inconspicuous and monitored what was happening. Sure enough there were two individuals chatting it up in the channel and sending commands to hundreds of compromised systems.
While reviewing the various compromised systems I noted that they were all *nix machines of one type or another. This was a few years back so I believe you are correct in stating that this is nothing new. What would have been new is if a botnet like this was discovered to be from a real hack and not some lame password login scan.
I don't have a problem with it being called a linux botnet, but until they can come up with an explanation for the means by which the systems were compromised, other than the likely lame password attacks, its not really news.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Doesn't matter who's hosting (Score:3, Informative)
If your customers put up vulnerable software on your shared, dedicated, or virtual hosting service and they don't update it or you don't detect it, someone's going to find it and exploit it.
Had something similar happen to my me. If you're monitoring server load, a webserver sending spam will definitely raise an alarm. As for services on odd ports, block everything except the real ports. Blocking outgoing traffic on IRC ports helps too in minimizing damage. The script kids are already making use of the recent Linux local root exploit (wunderbar_emporium) so make sure you do some yum updates!
nginx? (Score:5, Funny)
nginx, so that's what the worm is called? I'd better check my company's webservers so they aren't running this evil hacker malware.
Oh my... all of them had been infected. No worries though, I managed to clean them all up. A good day's work well done.
Stop bickering and solve the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than getting consumed in an OS holy-war, perhaps we should focus on how exactly these systems were compromised and how to detect whether your server has been compromised. Linux servers being compromised is not a new thing. If you run old-enough libraries and software on them or configure things improperly, they'll eventually be compromised.
Does anyone know if a particular vulnerability was used to gain access to systems?
Does anyone know how to detect whether your system is compromised in this manner (is doing "ps -aux nginx" simple enough to detect it)?
Spare everyone the OS holy-war and fanboism and let's figure out what the problem is, how to detect it, and what to do to fix it.
Re: (Score:2)
My thoughts, exactly. I RTFA'd, and found no mention of any specific vulnerability or method used to gain access to the servers. In fact, it isn't even clear to me that it's a *nix specific hack. The one common denominator seems to be - Apache.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, they exploited the most common vulnerability, the idiotic system administrator ;-)
Want to bet on how the servers were taken over? (Score:2)
My bet is on a poorly written PHP (which stands for "Please Hack Promptly") app.
Re:Want to bet on how the servers were taken over? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the article says that FTP passwords were used. Meaning they were probably sniffed either on FTP Users personal computer, or over the wire somewhere between the user and the server on one of the hops, which could be dangerous.
Moral of the story, use SSH!
packagement mgmt and repos play a small role here (Score:5, Interesting)
It's nice to be able to apt-get yourself the latest stable copy of apache2 and php5 and mysql and postfix humming with just a command or two, also nice to be able to apt-get upgrade them after you apt-got updated. Those who maintain, clean and contribute to the large public repositories that apt and yum and rpm and pkg_add, good people and they generally do a bang up job for 99% of the Linux and UNIX and UNIX-like folks. However, when you maintain servers which are not completely hidden behind a nat with these programs for years and once in a blue moon compile something you downloaded in a gzipped tar, you put yourself on admin autopilot and that can bite you in the ass.
Give you one example: I installed RoundCube, the most badass webmail client there will ever be, ever, with apt (the first time). Ran it for a while without incident. Had my system on weekly cron apt updates so I figured I was safe. Eventually I discover someone made it onto my system and put a malware installing js line in my web pages. Looking through the guy's bash history I discovered they got in through a RoundCube vulnerability. I checked out RoundCube's site [roundcube.net], something I should have done first thing but did not, and it turns out their stable version was much newer than what apt realized and that this vulnerability would not have been on my system about five months ago had I downloaded straight from their site and stayed on the ball with their support resources which are things that are less necessary when you just let apt-get rip.
Bottom line, apt-get update/upgrading would not patch a glaring vulnerability in software I found with apt originally with the default Debian sources.list and I doubt it would have on most other distros' package management systems. It wasn't RoundCube's fault, the patched release was their Stable build for a long time but I was left wide open to anyone who went on a rootkit site and googled for roundcube hosts and I got nailed. Learned my lesson and I don't fault the repository maintainers for being behind the ball a bit on less popular software in their enormous archives but if you ask me software should not be available on the default repositories for Linux variants that the maintainers are not confident that they can keep up to date or don't have some kind of way to be quickly and effectively notified by the authors/vendors in the event of a critical upgrade being available and to put it live right quick. Put it on the people who want to install such software themselves -- if they can make it past that hump I'd say their odds of running the software safely will be substantially higher than Joe Yum. And spreading awareness of cvs/svn would be nice too.
Can't believe I just admitted I got compromised.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Much better than the fanbois who have tried everything under the sun to defend their pet project against the evil meanies who don't have a problem admitting that every system has weaknesses.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I can't imagine how you came to the conclusion that the fault was with *apt* of all things.. did you think it works by magic? Blame the Debian "It's not moldy, so it's not for us" maintainers instead, or even yourself for using a distribution known to ship ancient software no longer supported by upstream.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Firstly, it's my fault for running a webmail client I got from browsing through apt-cache, installed with apt-get and configured mostly with dpkg-reconfigure instead of grabbing the official current build and reading the readme and man pages and faq, and doing this on a somewhat important machine. Did the same thing with Gallery [menalto.com] and PHPNuke [phpnuke.org] several years ago. Even webmin in my reckless and stupid experimental days. That's painting a target on yourself to get malware on your sites and start running irc bots
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Feeling secure disables the brain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, Linux is more secure by design than windows, but this attitude makes ppl dumb and lazy.
Linux is most definitely no more secure by design than Windows NT. It is actually far worse in many areas from a design perspective.
Linux is usually more secure as Implemented and deployed than Windows. But this has far more to do with the expertise of the sysadmins than the design of Linux. Microsoft.com seems to stay online despite running on beta versions of the MSFT suite.
This would be the reason... (Score:2)
Use the source, Luke (Score:4, Informative)
Let this be a lesson to everyone who reads the article. Security is not something that happens by accident.
I've said for a long time that binary packaging is, fundamentally, a Hell-spawned abomination masquerading as a convenience; incidents like this only prove the point.
Compile yourself a minimalistic base system, a la Hardened Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org].
Then get the absolute minimum number of packages you need for a working system, such that you've got some chance of keeping them updated. Firefox for web browsing, maybe. A single media player; VLC or Xine. Vim/Emacs as an editor. OpenOffice.org if you need that. Whatever servers you need, but keep that list small. A firewall, which is hopefully obvious.
Use a minimal window manager which doesn't have a dep list as long as your arm, as well. I use Ratpoison. Do not laugh until you've tried it. It is very, very fast, and resource consumption is virtually nil. It's basically an X version of GNU Screen.
Once you've got this small list of packages, take full, ruthless, practical advantage of the fact that your system is open source. Subscribe to the announce or bug related mailing lists for the apps you've got, and keep local virgin tarballs. This way, whenever there is a bug or potential exploit, and the patch gets posted within a few minutes or hours, you can get it the moment it goes to CVS, patch your own source tarball, and recompile. The same goes for the kernel itself.
You won't be vulnerable to exploits, because you'll get the solutions to them as they are implemented, and you're also far less likely to end up with a compromised machine as a result.
Brainless Windows refugees, who will sneer at me, and/or complain about how this isn't, "user friendly," don't even bother. This post isn't for you. We already know that you've committed yourselves to being servile, unthinking sheep, and you are therefore invited to accept the consequences of your (lack of) actions in that regard.
You could be right (Score:5, Insightful)
It's unclear exactly how the servers have become infected. Sinegubko speculates they belong to careless administrators who allowed their root passwords to be sniffed.
If Sinegubko is right and the attack vector was sniffed passwords, then it is likely that those passwords got sniffed by an existing Windows Botnet.
Re:You could be right (Score:4, Informative)
Absolutely. It also mentions that they were FTP passwords. FTP is all in cleartext, no encryption or obfuscation.
There is SFTP. But I don't know many providers that offer it. I avoid FTP in all cases and use SSH and SSHFS to talk to and transfer files to and from my servers.
I also use Linux on my home machines (including my laptop).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is SFTP. But I don't know many providers that offer it. I avoid FTP in all cases and use SSH and SSHFS to talk to and transfer files to and from my servers.
I also use Linux on my home machines (including my laptop).
SSHFS will most likely be using SFTP, or SCP. While you could do the work that SSHFS does with clever redirection of stdin and stdout it would be more complex and error prone than just using SFTP or SCP which are both usually implemented as subsystems of SSH and are provided by many SSH servers unless explicitly turned off (so if your provider gives you SSH access, that chances you have SFTP and SCP access too are high).
FTP? (Score:2)
I'm amazed that anyone still uses ftp on public networks for anything other than distributing files to anonymous downloaders; it's insanely insecure and there are much better alternatives like sftp and scp.
Re: (Score:2)
Password-authenticated SFTP can be just as bad, if, say, you're remotely administering a VPS somewhere with a compromised Windows machine. The attacker doesn't need to sniff passwords over the wire in that case.
If your machine is not compromised, SFTP is only marginally better if it is configured badly. If your SSH server and firewall is not configured to prevent brute-force password attacks, then you've still got a problem.
Best bet: Security in depth. Disallow SSH root logins; disallow SSH password authent